Virtual machine technology, supported in contemporary Microsoft® Windows®-based operating systems, allows a single physical computing machine to run multiple operating systems at the same time, such as to provide multiple server environments. In such technology, a virtual disk is a file that may be stored on a physical disk drive or on another virtual disk drive, yet is in a format that allows the file to be used (surfaced) as a disk device. For example, a virtual disk may be in a Microsoft® Virtual Hard Disk (VHD) format, whereby any driver that understands the VHD format is able to mount the VHD file as a disk device, that is, a virtual disk is a disk device created by having a VHD driver mount a VHD file. Such virtual disks can also be created and surfaced on a Windows® operating system running on a physical machine. These virtual disks can be used to store critical operating system files (e.g., a boot volume).
Such operating systems also may provide bare metal recovery support, such as via a technology named ASR (automated system recovery). This technology allows a backed-up computer system data (including state) to be re-created on a different physical machine, e.g., a new replacement machine, a repaired machine with new disks, and so forth. In general, ASR provides the ability for a backup/restore application to backup and restore computer's disk configuration. However, existing ASR technology does not accommodate virtual disks.